The Beauty Within

Heyooo!

My review for Johnson and Johnson’s PURPOSE Redness Reducing Moisturizer is up on The Beauty Brains!  A while ago, the Brains opened a forum for their readers to talk to each other, and of course I joined and became a total post-whore.  The Brains recruited a few of us who posted a lot to be product reviewers for their main site, and my first review is up!

Click here to read on their site, or just read below:

I used to have an extremely sensitive face that was always red. The redness was from a combination of pretty stupid things, such as:

• Using products that irritated my skin (thanks mom for telling me to use a salt scrub everyday to get my face really REALLY clean!)
• Spending tons of time in the sun without proper SPF, and
• The lovely and infamous Santa Ana winds that we experience here in LA.

Mother doesn’t always know best

Even though my skin has calmed down dramatically since the days of following my mom’s clueless skincare advice, my face is still a tad red and angry looking. When the opportunity to sample PURPOSE Redness Reducing Moisturizer with SPF 30, I took it right away. After all, according to its website, this product claims to have “CLINICALLY shown to reduce redness in just one week while it protects your face with broad-spectrum SPF 30 sunscreen. Its unique moisturizing complex begins to soothe dry skin on contact and works to improve overall skin tone and texture.”

After using it in the morning for 5 days, I don’t know if my face is really less red. The area right beside my nose is still red, but I think that’s due to my year-round “seasonal” allergies. Also, my face has been behaving rather well for the past 2 months, meaning no angry pimples exploding out of nowhere, no random rashes (except when I eat seafood), or anything evil. My diet has been normal, I haven’t seen the sun since I started working, and I’ve also been getting plenty of sleep each night. I did ask my sister over the weekend if she thought my face looked less red, and she said it did…

BUT, I’ve been having stomachaches the entire weekend, making me look a bit ghastly. So, does this product really work as a redness reducer? I really have no idea! None of the active ingredients are redness reducing agents, and their website doesn’t contain a working link to any research data showing that it contains an agent proven to reduce redness.

A good value for UV

Nevertheless, it’s a good basic morning moisturizer that contains tons of protection against both UVA and UVB. Their active ingredients are: Ensulizole, Octinoxate, Octocrylene, and Zinc Oxide, all of which offer great protection against the evil sun. It’s not oily at all, and it absorbs pretty quickly into my skin. I’ve found it to be a great base for both liquid foundations and powdered foundations. A lot of moisturizers tend to be too rich to use under liquid foundations, while others are too dry to use under powdered foundations, but this one was great for both. It’s also quite inexpensive and can be found at almost every drugstore. I definitely recommend this to people who spend a lot of time outside, but I can’t say for sure that it reduces redness.